Thursday, March 12, 2009

Q: Think of a familiar phrase in five words that means 'tongue tied.' One word in it has one letter, one word has two letters, one has three, one has four and one has five — though not necessarily in that order. What is the phrase?

This week, I have no way of providing a clue that won't give away the puzzle.

Edit: I was speechless, completely tongue-tied, I guess you could say I was...

The phrase is practically the same as a practice attributed to itinerant salesmen and political canvassers. Just change a 4 letter word to the answer's 5 letter word.

I'm inclined to agree with Lorenzo. The phrase has what I believe to be a more common meaning than tongue-tied. The phrase may be more commonly used with a 4 letter contraction in place of the 3 letter word.

Blaine, I agree with you. The five word answer is grammatically correct and there is nothing that I would change to make it more proper. I think that you and I have a different answer than the answer that Lorenzo and Hugh arrived at.

Without giving the answer away, in my answer, there are two letters used three times. Lorenzo and Hugh, does that agree with your answer?

I am Carl's girlfriend. He will not be posting on this blog anymore. When I saw his previous post I was unable to respond in any meaningful way, verbally or otherwise. I haven't been so... oh what's that expression... Well, I couldn't talk. I mean I was just, speechless. I was mmmfffmmff! mmmfff!

Thanks, Natasha; that's what I meant. I'm distracted today and, as you may have noticed, in an unusually silly mood. Has to do, to some extent, with my glee at the discovery of how many different facebook groups one may join which are very anti a certain right-wing spokesperson who's been in the news a bit more than usual of late. One could say the individual in question is seldom, if ever, (the answer to this week's puzzle).

This is Dave here. Sometimes my son (micropiranha) doesn't sign off of his gmail account, so when I post on this blog it posts under micropiranha instead of Dave. In the future, if you see anything from micropiranha, it's from me.

I think Mr. z gave this out not for its merits as a challenge, but because it is presumably quite rare to find a phrase with such interesting letter counts. I imagine he was tempted to just say "Just find a common five-word phrase with one 1-letter word, etc." but that would have left a paucity of correct entries and a lot of judgment calls on whether stuff like "A My Name Are Alice" would count.

Carl, Your reference to the "right-wing spokesperson" reminds me of a clue in the Washington Post Sundaypuzzle for March 1 "Running Gags" byMerl Reagle. The 97down clue says, "Mark Lane book, ____Judgment." Two-word answer, six spaces. It's amazing how that person seems to suddenly have become important. I wonder where his parents got his first name.

the comment made about "looking up tongue-tied synonyms" gave away the answer---but who cares, this site is entertaining. if one sees the flaws in oneself, and corrects them, then maybe they'll have some fun.